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Chapter 9: The Master Is a Mirror

Jesus Christ was simply repeating the Old Testament. He was trying his whole life to convince people: “I am the last prophet of the Jews.” He had never heard the word Christian, he had never heard the word Christ. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. And his whole effort was to convince the Jews: “I am the awaited prophet, the savior which Moses has promised. I have come.”

The Jews could have forgiven him. Jews are not bad people. And Jews are not violent people either. Nobody who is as intelligent as the Jews are can be violent. Forty percent of Nobel Prizes go to Jews - it is simply out of all proportion to their population. Almost half the Nobel Prizes go to Jews, and the other half to the rest of the world. Such intelligent people would not have crucified Jesus if he was saying something which was of his own experience. But he was saying things which were not his experience - all borrowed, and yet he was pretending that they were his. Jews could not forgive that, that dishonesty.

Otherwise, Jesus was not creating any trouble for anybody. He was a little bit of a nuisance. Just like the Witnesses of Jehovah or the Hare Krishna people; they are a little bit of a nuisance. If they catch hold of you they will not listen to you at all and they will go on giving you all kinds of wisdom, advice - and you are not interested; you are going to some other work, you want to be left alone. But they are determined to save you. Whether you want to be saved or not does not matter - you have to be saved.

It happened that I was sitting near the Ganges in Allahabad, and it was just as the sun was setting. A man started shouting from the water, “Save me! Save me!”

I am not interested in saving anybody. So I looked all around. If somebody was interested in saving him, let him have the first chance. But there was nobody, so finally I had to jump. And with difficulty - he was a heavy, fat man,. The fattest men in India you will find in Allahabad and Varanasi - the brahmins, the Hindu priests, who do nothing except eat.

Somehow I pulled him out. And he started being angry: “Why did you pull me out?”

I said, “This is something! You were asking for help, you were shouting, ‘Save me!’”

He said, “It was because I was becoming afraid of death. But in fact I was committing suicide.”

I said, “I am sorry, I had no idea that you were committing suicide.”

I pushed the man back! And he started shouting again, “Help!”

I said, “Now wait for somebody else to come. I will sit here and watch you commit suicide.”